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Emily VanSchmus
Philosophy of Religion
Professor Knepper
Final Paper
Religious views on death and dying rituals affect the ways humans view an
individual taking their life. These beliefs affect the ways in which Jains view
the difference between suicide and Sallekhana, and the way that Catholics
view the difference between physician-assisted suicide and the withholding or
withdrawal of care, even though all of these acts involve an individual making
a choice to end their life at a certain time. The religious lens through which
these situations are viewed classifies some of these acts as suicide (an
unacceptable way to die in both religions) and some of these acts as an
acceptable way to die within the faith.
For the terms of this paper, I will be using the authors Folkert, Chapple,
and Tukol as representatives of Jainism, and the authors Kelly et. al as
representatives of Catholicism. These authors are purely representatives,
used with the understanding that as a whole these religions are internally very
diverse. Not all claims made in this paper will reflect all members of these
religions – the views of these individuals are meant to provide insight into their
respective beliefs about the religions, rather than a comprehensive view of the
religion’s beliefs as a whole.
Death and dying rituals are an essential part of practicing a faith that has
afterlife or post-death beliefs. In both Jainism and Catholicism, how you live
life affects how you die. And, in these faiths, dying in a way that is not
supported or encouraged by the religion will affect what happens to you or
your soul after you die.
Jainism is an Indian religion that promotes a non-violent lifestyle for it’s
members. Members practice non-violence through meditation, fasting,
praying, and adapting their lifestyle to create the least amount of harm for all
living things. Jainism subscribes to the principle of continuous rebirths at
death, and the highest Jaina goal is to liberate one’s spirit from this cycle.
Jains also believe in karma – to achieve neutral karma at death is ideal, as
this is the only way to escape the rebirth cycle. Jains prepare for death by
altering their diet around the midpoint of their life – those who previously ate
meat will become vegetarians, etc. in order to cause the least amount of harm
to living beings. This period of fasting – and eventual freeing of the individual
from rebirth – is a practice called Sallekhana.
An understanding of Jain beliefs on life and death is necessary to
understanding their differentiation between Sallekhana and suicide. Because
Jains believe that everything is alive, it is customary to enter this final fast at
the end of their traditionally-75-year lifespan, so that their death does not
cause any harm or create any karma. For Jains who live their lives in such a
way as to not harm a single living being, this is the most peaceful way to
leave the earth. It is described as a way to “demonstrate a willingness to
devote oneself in an ultimate sense to the observance of nonviolence”
(Folkert, 197). To partake in Sallekhana, one must be at the end of their life
and already dying of old age, have an incurable disease, or be in a position
where living a normal life and following Jainism is no longer an option.
Sallekhana is a reflection of the way Jains live while they are alive: they
follow five vows of nonviolence, which prohibit them from harming plants or
animals, or accepting medications that are full of unnatural chemicals. But not
just any Jain can practice Sallekhana – those who follow the religion must
fast, meditate and study Jaina texts to prepare for the ritual. Guidelines for the
fasting process of Sallekhana are listed in the Kavaca, a religious instructional
for Jains. The process must be followed properly, and at the right time, to be
considered true Sallekhana. There are seventeen kinds of death in Jainism:
Sallekhana and sixteen additional ways that a Jain can die. Jains who face
death with an absence of fear are honored in the religion. So, unlike suicide,
which is usually performed by someone attempting to escape a bad situation
or an unpleasant life, Sallekhana is a celebration of life and a peaceful and
non-violent ritual. The Jaina texts “makes clear to the reader that this is not a
form of suicide but a deep expression of religious faith” (Folkert, Chapple p.
198).
Although Sallekhana is not seen as suicide in the Jain tradition, it is
possible for Jains to commit suicide, although it is not permitted by the religion
(except in extreme cases, where it would be considered ‘okay’ if you were
doing it to help your family or doing it to alleviate a burden on others).
Because Jains view Sallekhana as a religious celebratory tradition that come
with sacred rules and guidelines in order to partake, it is completely separated
from the act of suicide in their culture. The main distinction between
Sallekhana and suicide is the freeing of one’s soul through peaceful means,
to honor the vows of non-violence Jains make and live out during their
lifetimes, and celebrate the hopeful achievement of escaping the rebirth cycle.
Like Jainism, Catholicism pronounces that the way in which you live
affects what happens to you after you die. Catholicism is a Christian religion
that believes in one sovereign God. As infants, Catholics are baptized, a
process that removes their natural sin. After this, members receive the
sacrament of reconciliation when they are still young, around the age of seven
and eight. This sacrament means that Catholics are then expected to
participate in Confession. Although it is virtually impossible to never sin, if an
individual confesses their sins and repents their actions, their sins are
absolved. After this, individuals are confirmed into the church and are
expected to live by the teachings outlined in the Bible. Catholics believe that
their actions during their time on earth affect their destination in the afterlife. If
one has lived a good life, served God, and dies with minimal sin, that person
has a good chance of going to Heaven. The other two options are Hell or
Purgatory, for those who have failed to confess their sins and fulfill their
obligations to God.
The traditional Catholic belief is that life is sacred and should be lived
as long as humanly possible. The religious belief behind this is that God is in
control, and God’s will permits humans from having any doing in the timing of
their death. In traditional Catholicism, dying a ‘good’ death involves living a
natural life as long as you can, and living to carry out God’s will without sin.
Because of this, Catholics believe God should control when it is your time to
leave the earth. Catholics are not to interfere with God’s plan, and because of
this, some medical treatments are not permitted. For Catholic bioethics, Kelly
explains how the Principle of Double Effect (PDE) is used to determine what
is acceptable or allowed, and what is not. Distinctions between ordinary and
extraordinary levels of care make treatments obligatory, or optional,
respectively.
With advancing medical technology, bioethical issues are becoming a
hot topic within the religion, as Catholics are having to apply the PDE to
issues they hadn’t had the option to consider when their texts and doctrines
were first created. Perhaps the most controversial idea presently is the
concept of physician-assisted suicide. Suicide is not permitted in Catholicism.
With changing political views in an always-expanding western culture,
physician-assisted suicide has become an especially contended issue within
Catholicism. While individual Catholics may agree with physician-assisted
suicide or support the general practice, the Catholic law comes from the
Pope, who condemns physician-assisted suicide. He also has the firm stance
that life support should always be used when it is an option.
This is where a distinction can be made between different ways of
choosing when to die within Catholicism, much like the distinction that exists
in Jainism to differentiate Sallekhana from suicide. We know that suicide is
not allowed in Catholicism, and therefore, physician-assisted suicide is not
allowed either. However, Kelly makes the argument that there is a religious
difference between an individual choosing to withhold or withdraw end-of-life
care, and actively practicing physician assisted suicide. In this, he explains
there is a difference between actively killing a person (not allowed by
Catholicism) and passively allowing a person to die (which can be allowed by
Catholicism).
In the Catholic church, it used to be okay for sick or dying individuals to
stop consuming food and water toward the end of their death. In the case of
patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS patients), it can make even
more sense to withdraw food and water and let the individual die naturally.
This practice was allowed by the Catholic church until Pope John Paul II
decided this would no longer be an acceptable option for Catholic PVS
patients, because it was taking it upon an individual to decide when that life
ended, when that decision should ultimately be left up to God. Gerard Magill,
a Catholic and professor of Medical Ethics, who spoke at the last Comparison
Project event, disagreed with this ruling. He argued that Catholicism is not
about living as many days as possible, but about the quality of the days a
person does have. He also said that just because medical technologies give
us the capabilities to keep a person alive for a long time, doesn’t mean that
we should do so. His main argument for this was to allow a person to die with
dignity, and die in a way that allows them to be aware of their situation, so
that they may take the appropriate religious measures to ensure they die the
‘best’ Catholic death possible.
Magill’s ideas on PVS patients translate directly to cases of physicianassisted suicide as well. Physician-assisted suicide is not allowed by the
Church because it involves an individual makes a decision to die at a certain
time (the general principle condemned in the act of suicide), and also involves
a second party that then has to violate the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’
by providing life-ending medication. Magill’s idea about not keeping a person
alive just because it is medically possible could also apply in this situation.
Kelly argued that when you look at the situation as a whole, each of the
possible scenarios and outcomes associated with physician-assisted suicide
includes an individual making a decision, and then that individual dying a nonnatural death. At first glance, there really is no distinction between any of
these acts and suicide. However, after an exploration of the topic, he
concludes that really, withdrawing or withholding care still allows a person to
die a natural death, and is a separate act from suicide. This works well with
Magill’s explanation that putting an individual into a medically-induced coma
and withdrawing care (like food and water) and letting them die naturally is
allowed by Catholicism because it is not actively killing the person (and thus is
not considered suicide).
In any religion, there will be people who disagree or interpret doctrine
differently. Much like Jainism has seventeen classifications of death, the
authors Quill, Dresser, and Brock provide five distinct ways of distinguishing
between different ways of killing and/or letting a patient die, that disagree with
Kelly’s statements. These are: withholding life-saving treatment, withdrawing
life-saving treatment, pain relief that hastens death, physician-assisted
suicide, and active euthanasia. These authors concluded that each of these
five scenarios are all a variation of killing a person, and that for this reason,
none of them should be allowed. However, Kelly says on page 212 of his
reading, that withholding or withdrawing care is considered okay by the official
Catholic teachings.
So, under the blanket of Kelly’s Catholicism, suicide and physicianassisted suicide are not allowed, but withholding or withdrawing care, and
providing pain relief that hastens death are allowed. Magill and Kelly both
conclude this (although Kelly thinks it should be illegal, even if it can be
considered morally right). In his presentation, Magill took this idea a step
farther and argued that there may not be enough of a difference to allow one
and not the other. This is only his interpretation – it is based on questions of
ethics and morality rather than actual Catholic doctrine. Magill argues that if
pain relief that hastens death is allowed, the following scenario is allowed to
occur: a patient with terminal cancer may be injected with strong painrelieving drugs on Monday, fall into a medically-induced coma, and die on
Friday. This is allowed by the Catholic Church. But, Magill argues, that this
really is no different from injecting that same terminal patient with stronger
drugs on Monday, and just allowing them to die at that moment instead of
dragging out the exact same outcome just because one is ‘allowed’ and one
is not.
In both Catholicism and Jainism, there are blurred lines between
different ways an individual can choose to die. One of the main differences is
the absence of a God role in Jainism, because following God’s will and not
destroying God’s creations is one of the main reasons suicide is not allowed
in Catholicism. The role of human decision-making is limited in both Jain and
Catholic deaths, in that a person cannot just decide they’d like to die and act
on that decision. Both religions have narrow requirements for allowing
individuals to make decisions to end their life – Jains must meet the
guidelines for Sallekhana, and Catholics can refuse care only in certain
situations, where natural death is inevitable in the near future anyway. Sin
and karma and their roles in the afterlife play a similar role in this process too
– if a Jain commits suicide before the 75 year mark that is considered the end
of the human life cycle, they will experience all the karma they’ve missed all at
once (not an ideal situation, and also ensures that the Jain will be reborn). If a
Catholic commits suicide, they are committing a sin, and likely will not go to
Heaven (also not ideal).
In one sense, Sallekhana being separate from suicide is easier to
understand, because Sallekhana is such a specific, traditional ritual. It is the
ultimate goal for Jains, and it makes sense that they would want to do it. In
the case of Catholic bioethics, the Bible doesn’t say ‘you should strive to be in
a place where you could accept pain-reducing drugs that hasten your death.’
These are, in some sense, case-by-case situations because there aren’t
guidelines for bioethics listed in traditional Catholic doctrine. Using the PDE is
useful for encounters with these situations that don’t have doctrine-set
guidelines, but it can also be seen as a get-out-of-jail-free card, or a perpetual
guilt machine, because there will always be Catholics who choose not to use
the PDE and believe they’re living their faith more purely.
These ideas are particularly compelling when you consider the fact that
in each scenario, an individual is making the choice to end their life, and
shortly after, they are dead. Beliefs in the afterlife (or another life) are what
make the scenarios so different for those within the religions. From the
outside looking in, it’s easy to dismiss these beliefs. From a perspective of
someone who is neither Jain nor Catholic, it’s easy to think all of these
situations or scenarios are really the same, and having labels on what is
‘okay’ and what is not can seem silly.
After all of this analyzing of Jain and Catholic dying rituals, I was
questioning why we feel the need to categorize these things within religions,
and what difference it really makes if the outcomes are the same anyway.
Through my writing process, I came to a few key conclusions. Every religion
has it’s own set of beliefs around death and dying rituals, because dying is
something we don’t know much about. Since no living human can actually tell
us what really happens when we die, religion gives us a way to explain the
unknown. Because of this, even though every belief system thinks their
beliefs on death are right, there is no way to know who is ‘actually’ right. But
this is actually beneficial to the study of religions – there is no way to know
who is right, so no one actually has to be right. Not knowing about death is a
terrifying idea to us as humans, which is why we have the constructs of
religion in the first place. We as humans ritualize things we are afraid of so
that they become a rite of passage, which explains why Jains and Catholics
are so adamant about differentiating ways of dying in their religions.
We don’t need to have a ‘true’ answer for any of these big questions.
Simply believing in a faith makes it true for that individual, and that is the
biggest value in subscribing to a set of faiths. From my perspective, it doesn’t
matter as much which set of beliefs a person subscribes to, but that they have
beliefs, and that the beliefs provide answers or guidelines for that individual.
So, for a Jain, the difference between Sallekhana and suicide is just as real
as the difference between PAS and more passive measures with the same
end result for Catholics – and these differences are just as real for any other
religion and their respective rituals, even if we can’t be sure about what
actually happens to humans after death.
Works Cited
Contemporary Catholic Healthcare Ethics, Kelly et. al.
Eternal Life, Death, and Dying in Jainism, Chapple
Introduction to Jainism, Folkert
Sallekhana is not Suicide, Tukol